Under Five Years

Caveat: I am writing this on Monday night, November 2, 2020. That means neither you nor I know where the world will really be by the time you read this except a certain amount of reeling will still be taking place. You may not even get back to your email to see what an aging aunt had to say about this very uncertain week. I have already voted, and I hope you have or will. That action, whatever our choice, may have been the most positive action of the week. The right to even have had a say so is something to be cherished.

My hold on to statement came from a retired columnist for the Houston Chronicle. “May we not be satisfied with the new normal.” Leaving the house with a mask is an engrained habit now. The possibility of Covid spiking again still looms. Nearly all households face some economic adjustment. Working from home at least means one has a job. Mix in what my mother would call unexceptable behavior, and this strongly becomes not the life I ordered. Clinging to a positive vision of the future requires deep breathing and moving away from the cliff of only complaining.

In January I decided this was the year to read the Bible through again. By March, I was joining in the Exodus. “How appropriate,” was my casual thought. Slogging through those forty years was not pleasant or encouraging. Granted, God didn’t abandon them, yet the journey took resolve, commitment, following directions, and doing your best. Everyone over twenty years didn’t make it. Only those willing to change and carry on.

Hence my title. Whenever by whatever means we as families, neighborhoods, towns, country reach a place of recovery, only the very youngest will not have a memory of what this time was like. They need to hear how we journeyed statements. I found out that my mother had trouble with the nine’s multiplication tables. That year we camped in the back yard and had a good shower close by. . That year I had four different masks of space creatures, and my dad borrowed one to wear to a meeting. A leader was called to help Israel overcome enemies and claim a promised land. Joshua retold them what had been said from the beginning. “This is how it works. Choose to do right. Every day, for the sake of those who never knew the struggle.”

“…choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.’ Deuteronomy 30: 19